TMTPost T-EDGE Annual International Conference serves as a global platform for innovators around the world to meet and exchange annually. T-EDGE has won much attention from thought leaders in science, business and media. It has become an important link that connects global leading forces to China.

On December 18th, Jiangsu Xuelang Town and TMTPost jointly announced the Xuelang Conference, which will be held in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, in May 2018, at the 2017 TMTPost T-EDGE Annual International Smart Manufacturing Summit. Xuelang Town and TMTPost aim to utilize Xuelang Town as an innovation platform to contribute to the deep integration of Chinese manufacturing power and technologies.

Wuxi, known as the global IoT base, is a fast-developing and prosperous city located in the South-Eastern Chinese province Jiangsu.

In August 2017, the construction of Xuelang Town officially began in Taihu New City in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. The initiative also launched the “Awakening Project” in partnership with Yunqi Town, aiming to revitalize the Internet and manufacturing industry.

Different from Yunqi Town, which started as a cloud computing industry zone, Xuelang Town is a small town covering an area of 3,500 square meters that started from scratch. “In the future, we are going to turn IoT technologies into new drives for the manufacturing industry,” Feng Aidong, director at Xuelang Town’s development office said, explaining their vision for the town. “This will also make the manufacturing industry a driving force for the development of IoT.”

As the honorary town major and founder of Yunqi Town, Wang Jian stated that Xuelang Town has three important things to take notice of:

1. Xuelang Conference is the core of the project. It’s a seed planter, a declaration that sparks thinking. It’s not just a conference, it’s an opportunity for everyone to start thinking.

2. The town is a physical media. It doesn’t rely on the scale to gain an advantage, but people’s creativity. We need this group of people to gather here.

3. The establishment of the Museum of Enlightenment. We need to reflect on the past and learn from our experience. And we record and preserve them as social value.

At the recent 2017 T-EDGE Summit, Wang Jian voiced that Internet companies need transformation more than manufacturing companies do. In recent years, the manufacturing industry in China is perceived as declining while Internet companies have been growing wildly. However, the truth is there are still many quality manufacturing companies gaining momentum, getting ready to set themselves apart from the crowd in the new round of competition.

Since January 2017, TMTPost has been sending elite reporters to the very forefront of the manufacturing industry, visiting a series of Chinese manufacturing companies that are undergoing deep transformation, and launched the Rediscovering the Chinese Manufacturing Industry column. TMTPost has reported outstanding but low-profile manufacturing companies like SANY Heavy Industry, Redcollar, Sanhua Group, Hanwei, and SAIC MAXUS etc., providing insights in industrial upgrade and supply-side reformation for the Chinese manufacturing industry.

Jiangsu Huahong Technology is the only listed enterprise focusing on the field of environmental protection and recycling resource manufacturing. The company has transformed from an enterprise focusing on producing shearing machines, packers, heavy metal waste and its processing, to an innovative forerunner in car recycling technologies.

The company’s CTO Huang Jiansheng mentioned the technological demands from manufacturing companies at the roundtable forum on Invisible Winners in the Manufacturing Industry at the T-EDGE Summit: “From dismantling the cars to extracting the usable materials and reprocessing, we wish that each device will input all the information into the system, including the output information. These information can provide second-hand manufacturers with quality and reusable products, components, and materials. Then we break down the car and sort out magnetic (including garbage, plastic, copper, aluminum) and non-magnetic materials. At last we would do a statistical sorting.”

Using image recognition and deep learning technologies to differentiate and recognize cooper, plastic, and rubber etc. and categorize them quacking is a very clear AI implementation boasting a very large market. An increasing number of manufacturing companies will have such demand.

It’s similar to what Yunqi Conference means to Yunqi Town and cloud computing. Xuelang Conference project, jointly launched by TMTPost and Xuelang Town, aims to generate an “enlightenment movement” for the manufacturing industry and Internet industry in China. The very first Xuelang Conference will be held in May 2018 and it will be the first conference after Xuelang Town completes the construction process. “It’s not about fusing the manufacturing industry and Internet industry together, but it’s about rethinking the relationship between the manufacturing industry and Internet industry,” Feng Aidong stated. “This is the original goal of Xuelang Town being a thought and industry base. That’s why Xuelang Town will set to become a world-class IoT and industry thought and strategy base.”

From Wang Jian’s perspective, much thinking must be done on the relationship between the manufacturing industry and Internet. “Without the Internet, the manufacturing industry has no future. But without the manufacturing industry, the Internet industry is also doomed.” To drive the development of Xuelang Town, the relationship between innovation and capital must be sorted out. “Enterprises decide what the future would be, not the capital. This is very important. We need to sort out what contributes to innovation the most. We believe that it might be those companies active on the stage now instead of the capital as the traditional perspective perceives, or the Internet.”

“Like Dr. Wang Jian has said it. If one day the industry flow volume on the Internet surpassed the data flow of online videos, then it means Xuelang Town is successful,” TMTPost’s co-founder Liu Xiangming added further comment on the relationship between the manufacturing and Internet industry. “In the future, we are hoping to generate more value from industrial data and Internet flow.”

“The goal of Xuelang Conference is not about getting a bunch of these enterprises to have a meeting together. It would be interesting if these companies can achieve something together,” Wang said. “If Xuelang Town would become a successful project, then the manufacturing industry we would talk about in five or ten years would be different from what we are talking about today. The way we produce products, and the products we produce, will be different. I believe the manufacturing industry will undergo significant changes with the emergence of Xuelang Town. It would be something good.”